IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO

EASTERN DIVISION

TERESA L. HATFIELD, 

 Plaintiff, 

 v. Case No. 2:11-cv-341

 JUDGE GREGORY L. FROST

MICHAEL J. ASTRUE, Magistrate Judge Kemp

COMMISSIONER OF SOCIAL SECURITY, 

 

Defendant. 

 OPINION AND ORDER

 Plaintiff, Teresa L. Hatfield, filed this action seeking

review of a final decision of the Commissioner of Social Security

denying in part her application for supplemental security income. 

This case is before the Court for consideration of the

plaintiff’s objections (ECF No. 16) to the Report and

Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge which was filed on June

28, 2012 (ECF No. 15). The Commissioner has filed a response to

the objections (ECF No. 17). The Magistrate Judge recommended

that the Court overrule plaintiff’s statement of errors, affirm

the Commissioner’s finding that plaintiff was not disabled prior

to July 4, 2005, and enter judgment in favor of the defendant. 

For the reasons stated below, the Court OVERRULES the plaintiff’s

Objections, ADOPTS the Magistrate Judge’s Report and

Recommendation, OVERRULES the plaintiff’s statement of errors,

and DIRECTS the Clerk to enter judgment in favor of the

defendant.

I.

Because neither party has objected to the accuracy of the

Report and Recommendation’s summary of the testimony and the

medical evidence, the Court adopts the summary and repeats here

only those facts relevant to the resolution of plaintiff’s

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objections. 

This is the second time this matter has been before the

Court. In Hatfield v. Comm’r of Social Security, 2008 WL 622967

(S.D. Ohio March 6, 2008), the Court remanded the case to the

Commissioner under 42 U.S.C. §405(g), sentence four. The basis

of that remand was the Administrative Law Judge’s rejection of

the opinion of plaintiff’s treating mental health professional,

Dr. Hamill, to the effect that plaintiff was disabled due to

psychologically-based symptoms. The Court found that the ALJ had

relied improperly on a finding that plaintiff had not credibly

reported her symptoms to Dr. Hamill. That finding was based only

upon the plaintiff’s ability to conduct herself appropriately at

the administrative hearing and her description of her activities

of daily living. The former reason was simply invalid, and the

latter reason was not supported by the record because plaintiff

testified that her activities of daily living were very

restricted and involved withdrawing from interactions with others

and sleeping most of the time. The Court did not direct the ALJ

to give Dr. Hamill’s opinion controlling weight, however; it left

it to the ALJ to re-evaluate the record and to articulate, based

on the record, the amount of weight the ALJ would give to Dr.

Hamill’s views, and why. In directing a remand, the Court noted

that the medical advisor called to testify at the administrative

hearing was not an expert in mental impairments, and stated that

the ALJ was “free ... to obtain additional medical opinions if

that would be helpful.” Hatfield, supra, at *9.

On remand, the ALJ did not obtain any additional medical

opinions as to plaintiff’s claimed psychological disability. The

ALJ did, however, hold another administrative hearing at which

plaintiff, a medical expert (but not, again, one with expertise

in the area of mental impairments), and a vocational expert

testified. The ALJ also reviewed approximately 150 pages of

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newly-submitted medical records. The ALJ considered plaintiff’s

testimony that she had gained weight since the prior hearing due

to depression and had not worked since then, and that she was

having headaches on a daily basis and migraine headaches less

frequently. The new medical records showed that in 2006

plaintiff had reported to a different psychiatrist much the same

set of symptoms as she reported to Dr. Hamill, which included

short-term memory problems, depression, and withdrawal. The ALJ

found that because the frequency of plaintiff’s headaches

increased after July 4, 2005, to the point where she would miss a

substantial number of days of work each month, she became

disabled on that date. Plaintiff claimed in her statement of

errors, and continues to claim in her objections, that the ALJ

should have found that her disability began much earlier, and

that the ALJ both failed to comply with the Court’s remand order

and again failed properly to evaluate Dr. Hamill’s opinion about

her psychological disability.

II.

If a party objects within the allotted time to a report and

recommendation, the Court “shall make a de novo determination of

those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or

recommendations to which objection is made.” 28 U.S.C. §

636(b)(1); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(b). Upon review, the

Court “may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the

findings or recommendations made by the magistrate judge.” 28

U.S.C. § 636(b)(1).

 The Court’s review “is limited to determining whether the

Commissioner’s decision ‘is supported by substantial evidence and

was made pursuant to proper legal standards.’” Ealy v. Comm’r of

Soc. Sec., 594 F.3d 504, 512 (6th Cir. 2010) (quoting Rogers v.

Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 486 F.3d 234, 241 (6th Cir. 2007)); see also

42 U.S.C. § 405(g) (“The findings of the Commissioner of Social

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Security as to any fact, if supported by substantial evidence,

shall be conclusive.”). Put another way, a decision supported by

substantial evidence is not subject to reversal, even if the

reviewing court might arrive at a different conclusion. Mullen v.

Bowen, 800 F.2d 535, 545 (6th Cir. 1986). “Substantial evidence

exists when ‘a reasonable mind could accept the evidence as

adequate to support a conclusion [and] . . . presupposes that

there is a zone of choice within which the decision-makers can go

either way, without interference by the courts.’” Blakley v.

Comm’r of Soc. Sec., 581 F.3d 399, 406 (6th Cir. 2009) (internal

citation omitted). Even if supported by substantial evidence,

however, “‘a decision of the Commissioner will not be upheld

where the [Commissioner] fails to follow its own regulations and

where that error prejudices a claimant on the merits or deprives

the claimant of a substantial right.’” Rabbers v. Comm’r of Soc.

Sec., 582 F.3d 647, 651 (6th Cir. 2009) (quoting Bowen v. Comm’r

of Soc. Sec., 478 F.3d 742, 746 (6th Cir. 2007)).

III.

The first issue raised in the objections is whether the ALJ

failed to follow this Court’s prior order of remand. Plaintiff

argues that the Court ordered the ALJ to obtain another medical

opinion on the issue of psychological disability. Because that

did not happen, plaintiff claims the Court’s order was not

followed.

From the brief summary of the Court’s prior order recited

above, it should be apparent that the Court did not specifically

direct the ALJ to obtain an additional medical opinion or to call

a mental health expert as a witness at the second administrative

hearing. The Court left that decision to the discretion of the

ALJ. The ALJ chose not to call such an expert. That did not

violate the remand order. The absence of additional expert

opinions or testimony might have had some impact on the amount of

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support for the ALJ’s decision, but that is a different question,

and one which the Court can review in the context of deciding if

the ALJ’s more recent rejection of Dr. Hamill’s opinion is

supported by substantial evidence. The Court therefore overrules

the first objection.

The second objection takes issue with the ALJ’s restated

rationale for rejecting Dr. Hamill’s opinion. According to

plaintiff, the ALJ based that rejected on essentially the same

reasoning which the Court previously found deficient. Plaintiff

argues that the second opinion is “virtually identical” to the

one which the Court overturned, and that the Commissioner either

failed to follow the Court’s instructions or issued another

improper decision; either way, plaintiff argues that another

remand or an award of benefits should be ordered.

The short response to this argument is that the ALJ’s two

opinions are not identical, and that the second relies on

legitimate factors which find substantial support in the record. 

It is true that, for a second time, the ALJ found plaintiff to

have overstated the degree of her limitations to Dr. Hamill, but

this time the ALJ made a credibility finding which took into

account additional factors such as inconsistencies in the way in

which plaintiff reported her symptoms to various sources, the

fact that she did not aggressively pursue treatment of what were

claimed to be debilitating psychological symptoms, and the fact

that the medical records indicated a good response to medication. 

Plaintiff never objected to the ALJ’s finding that she was not

completely credible when describing the extent of her symptoms,

and the ALJ was allowed to rely on this factor as undercutting

the validity of Dr. Hamill’s opinion.

The ALJ also found, in the second opinion, that Dr. Hamill’s

opinions were contradicted by other evidence in the record. The

ALJ did not make this explicit finding in the first opinion. As

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the Report and Recommendation notes, other medical records showed

that plaintiff’s condition improved with treatment, and Dr.

Hamill himself called her condition “mild.” The ALJ found that

his own treatment notes did not support the extreme limitations

he imposed. The ALJ further found that Dr. Tanley, who examined

plaintiff, expressed different views and that his opinion was

supported by his findings, including test results. Again, these

are new bases for rejecting Dr. Hamill’s views which were not

articulated in the prior opinion, and, again, plaintiff does not

claim that the facts cited by the ALJ do not appear in the

record. 

The ALJ gave other reasons for rejecting Dr. Hamill’s

report. The Report and Recommendation concluded that some of

them were not supported by the record. However, because the

reasons just discussed were based on the record, and because it

is up to the ALJ to make credibility findings and to resolve

conflicts in the medical evidence, the Report and Recommendation

concluded that the deficiencies in the prior opinion had been

addressed. This Court agrees. The ALJ properly found

plaintiff’s psychological symptoms to be no more than moderate,

and credited the vocational expert’s testimony that, at least

until July 4, 2005, there were substantial numbers of jobs which

she could do. Plaintiff’s objections to the recommendation that

the Commissioner’s decision be affirmed are therefore without

merit.

 IV.

The Court, having reviewed the record de novo, determines

that the ALJ’s decision to deny plaintiff’s application for

supplemental security income for any dates before July 4, 2005 is

supported by substantial evidence. The Court therefore OVERRULES

the Objections (ECF No. 16), ADOPTS the Magistrate Judge’s Report

and Recommendation (ECF No. 15), OVERRULES the plaintiff’s

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statement of errors (ECF No. 11), and DIRECTS the Clerk to enter

judgment in favor of the defendant.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

/s/ Gregory L. Frost

GREGORY L. FROST

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

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